South Carolina head coach Frank Martin was pleasantly surprised by a young reporter’s question in the postgame press conference just after his team beat Baylor to advance to the Elite Eight.

The kid is there at the NCAA tournament representing Sports Illustrated for Kids, and he did an excellent job. You can watch the tremendous exchange here:

The kid, whose name is Max, asked:

“Coach, congratulations on the win tonight. Your team clearly won the defensive battle tonight. When you coach and teach your team defense, what’s more important: technique or attitude?”

Martin responded by showing Max respect and taking him seriously. It was a perfect response. The coach said:

“First of all, amount of respect to you. That’s a heck of a question. I’ve been doing this a long time, and that’s the first time anyone’s ever asked me that. That’s a heck of a question.

“Attitude comes first. We gotta have guys that are gonna believe in our mission, that are gonna believe in what we wanna do. Once they believe, then we can teach them the technique. It all starts with our mindset, and we’ve got guys that are completely bought in to what we do.”

Here’s a photo of Max with a few Gamecocks players that he shared on Twitter on Thursday:

I think it’s safe to say Max has a bright future ahead of him.